“If teammates don’t want to fight, then they are just going to have to go somewhere else,” he continued. “We don’t put up with that stuff.

He says that as if that’s been the norm in the UFC. This is more bullshit. He can say this sure, but you aren’t going to ever see Tyson Griffin matched with Gray Maynard and you’ll never see an Anderson Silva vs. Machida fight no matter how much bullshit these guys say.

I’m sure the UFC will go out of their way to avoid this, but it’s smart to leave the option open. Too much concentration of talent at top camps that it needs to be stated that, sooner or later, they will be fighting one another. The welterweight division has fitch, koscheck, and swick (all arguably top 5 welterweights) at the same camp. I’m sure that fitch/koscheck would have fought already if they weren’t at the same camp.

This is suck crap. When you have these fights you almost always end up with duds. The two fighters know eachother too well so they know what to avoid and what to attack and you end up with mostly sketchy fights. If Rashad has the belt and Jardine wants it, then it would be up to him to leave and train elsewhere for a while and then take the challenge but they have to adapt new strategies and techniques before they battle it out.

“He can say this sure, but you aren’t going to ever see Tyson Griffin matched with Gray Maynard and you’ll never see an Anderson Silva vs. Machida fight no matter how much bullshit these guys say”

If the public demands it and it is the most logical fight between champ and #1 contender, the UFC will make it happen. We saw in the past Tito Ortiz try to avoid a fight with Chuck because he claimed they were too close of friends. But the fight ended up happening not only once but twice.

There are plenty more examples in MMA of fighters realizing that they have to fight a teammate or mentor. Look at Gomi vs. Sakurai.

But the reality is, the fights are always very cautious and never balls to the wall trying to dismantle the other guy. If it was for a title maybe they would give all the effort in the world, but just for a paycheck, it would more than likely be a clinch fest where neither fighter tried doing anything more than winning on points.

rediknight “If the public demands it and it is the most logical fight between champ and #1 contender, the UFC will make it happen.”

No they won’t. You can’t believe that. Your examples are off too Tito was avoiding Chuck because he wanted more money not because they used too train together,and Gomi and Sakurai weren’t current training partners when they fought.

And besides what he’s saying here is he’ll make current teammates fight one another or they can go elsewhere. As if he told Anderson Silva and Machida too fight and they refused he’d tell them to go fight elsewhere? Do you believe that total bullshit?

It does kind of irritate me when Anderson Silva and Lyoto Machida don’t want to fight because they are friends, and when no one on AKA wants to fight each other either.

I was a wrestler in high school, so to me, competing against a friend came all of the time. We had to wrestle-off to see who would go on each different tournament. So we always had to stay up to par, there was no slacking, there were no favortisms (like in football)…it was me earning my spot.

So to these teams who are so reluctant to fight their friend; get over it! Ultimately when it all boils down, this is a competitive sport. Regardless if you know these guys personally, you sometimes are going to have to fight them in order to get to that championship. If the other guy doesn’t like it, tell him to forfeit or go to another gym.